Ween‘s beloved 1994 album Chocolate and Cheese will be served up anew on Aug. 2, when Rhino will release a 30th anniversary deluxe edition of the project. The album will be augmented with 15 previously unreleased outtakes and demos including the truly strange “Junkie Boy,” which is out now.
Chocolate and Cheese was Ween’s first album made in a professional studio after several years of four track-recorded audio madness, and found the duo of Aaron “Gene Ween” Freeman and Mickey “Dean Ween” Melchiondo” furthering their mastery of seemingly any genre. The LP dabbles in everything from sweet, Mannequin-referencing Philadelphia soul (“Freedom of ‘76”), pitch-altered, genial country ditties (“Mister, Would You Please Help My Pony”) and AM-radio folk (“Baby Bitch”) to creepy, borderline offensive tracks such as “The HIV Song” and “Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down).”
The album also includes the “boogie-woogie-oogie” rave-up “Voodoo Lady” and the chugging synth-pop jam “Roses Are Free,” highlighted by such lyrics as “resist all the urges that make you want to go out and kill” and “eat plenty of lasagna till you know that you’ve had your fill.”
The bonus tracks were drawn from hundreds of hours of tapes from the era, with Melchiondo admitting, “keeping with Ween tradition, Aaron and I probably picked all the wrong songs, mixed them, and now here they are.”
Ween will celebrate the anniversary Sept. 27 with a complete performance of Chocolate and Cheese during a de facto hometown show at Philadelphia’s Mann Music Center. The group also has a handful of West Coast dates on tap in August.
Here are the previously unreleased bonus tracks on Chocolate and Cheese (Deluxe Edition):
“Crappy Anniversary Jimmy”
“Warm Socks”
“Stop, Look, Listen (and Learn)”
“Dirty Money”
“I Got It”
“Belgian Stew”
“Voodoo Lady” (demo)
“Junkie Boy”
“Smooth Mover”
“Church Fire”
“Take Me Away” (demo)
“Sasha”
“Roses Are Free” (demo)
“Candi” (demo)
“I Really Miss You (and I’m All Alone)”